with the lake in our hair
by pozarpel
Summary: The back door was the way to go, when it came to visiting Elizaveta. It's August, 1961. The foundations of a wall are set, Gilbert is pitiful, and three fading nations gather where the countryside turns time just right.


The back door was the way to go, when it came to visiting Elizaveta.

He wasn't sure she was so keen on the tradition anymore—she hadn't been to see him personally for a few long decades now, and times had changed, as they always did. The decades between them were heavy with defeat and dejection and the deception of business-as-usual in the midst of all their misery. They did not present the opportunity for pleasure visits. Or, like, pleasure break-ins, in their case.

Gilbert's boots were too shitty to grip the crumbling brick wall any, so he pulled himself up by the arms and winced at the strain. Physical exertion had been problematic for the last few years—his shallow lungs were full-up with smog, his arms could no longer perform insane feats of strength. It wasn't just that, he was convinced; the journey had been arduous, the summer heat was oppressive, the cobblestones on the road had made the seat of his motorcycle jut repeatedly into his groin, the buzz of rural Hungarian made his head hurt.

His breath hitched as he dug his foot in, swinging the other leg over the top. He allowed himself a moment of triumph when he dropped onto enemy territory. Trespassing: complete. Now to accomplish phase 2.

Gilbert surveyed her garden, torn up with errant gardener's instruments and weeds and shrubbery. The cement was cracked and worn, the furniture rusted in the lake-addled air. Balaton was not her main house, he knew, and certainly not a locale suited to entertaining guests or keeping up an appearance of normalcy, but she'd really let the place go. He chalked it up to the lack of Roderich's priss pushing her to pursue elegant landscaping, but secretly hoped, as his shitty boots trampled over all her plants, that the inside of her house remained as pristine and flawless as Austria used to keep their Vienna estate.

It had always been somewhat hard to bust in there, up until the weak-willed guards folded to Gilbert's persistence—and his peerless ability to beat the ever-loving fuck out of people.

In all honesty, he probably didn't have that anymore. But Hungary's shoddy house at Balaton had no guards, either. Just one crooked screen door, and one crooked sad girl.

He didn't bother to deny it to himself, he was rearing to see her, even if she greeted him with a fist. Especially if she greeted him with a fist. He craved the distraction. Plus, the sun rays down here had him sweating through his army jacket, so the cool walls of her vacation home were calling loud and clear. He jostled the rusty handle, twisting his mouth as he felt at the netted mesh of the door screen. He couldn't see or hear anything inside—he considered heading through the window, but resolved to stick to the old ways. So, the back door it was: relatively flimsy, broken with misuse…

Well, old habits die hard. And a destructive attitude was not so much habit as it was nature.

Crouching and silent as possible, Gilbert flipped out a pocket knife and easily jabbed it into the screen. He was gleeful in the middle of dragging it down through the mesh, trying to carve out an opening big enough to walk through (some door that would be) when he was faced with two dainty little shins, dimmed dark on the other side, in front of his face. Before he could raise his eyes or lift his legs, the screen door had flung open inwards, and outwards came one not-so-dainty foot, which promptly fell right into his face.

"Don't think that I'm impressed," Elizaveta said with distaste, and dipped to haul him up by the collar of his jacket. She yanked him up and inside. Like a true gentleman, the sputtering Prussia took it as an express invitation into her abode, and took no time to judge the interior—Elizaveta had tossed him onto the floorboards with a _thud_, leaving his vision spinning just so.

"Not so happy to see me, Lizzie?" he asked, excited rather than annoyed. He reached out and caught her ankle, and before she could twist out of his grasp he yanked hard enough that she toppled gracelessly to the floor, too, and from there, it was only following tradition that he get her pinned. It'd been too long since he'd just been able to slap and hit and roll and tussle, way too fucking long, he'd make a massive mess of her house and clean it spotless right after.

She grunted as an answer, and socked him across the cheek. He was delighted.

"Sorry to get caught like that—" he bit out, struggling—their hands were locked, shoving against each other, elbows jutting every which way as they tried to secure the other's immobility. Prussia had the advantage, but Elizaveta had a base of grit not to be trifled with. "Just thought I'd drop in—a surprise, you know—"

"You're crazy," she said through her teeth, pulling up her leg and ramming a knee into his gut. He lost his air, she pushed him over on his back and pinned one wrist as she covered him—her knee, his diaphragm. She pressed in, so he thrashed. "I felt you coming—as soon as you entered the country, you moron."

Odd thought, that. Their feelings were not so specific as to track another nation within their borders, or to discern the guest nation's identity. He made a note of it, though—she'd never felt him coming in Vienna.

"Could've been Ivan," he reasoned, freeing his wrist and sitting up; she deterred a punch, her hair falling over her face. Oh, but he could see the look in her eyes.

"Oh, no," she responded, shunting him into a formidable headlock. He struggled. "He's all done picking on _me_—I hear—lately all that guy's been doing—is fucking with the GDR—"

She huffed, and for one moment, they were catching their breath. Then she continued, squeezing tighter. "So of course—_poor little Gilbert_—would come—running here eventually—"

"Oh, shut the hell up," he said, hotly aware that her logic passed, and further aware that she didn't take one single step on German soil when it was her in the dog house back in '56. But as soon as he'd hit his breaking point, he'd gone on an impulse road trip—an escape—and found himself en route to Hungary. The amount of effort expended just to get here to be wrestling with her on the floor was a dead give-away: he needed this, needed her. She had the upper hand. He could hardly think of a time when she had not.

"Why should I? You show up here—immature as ever—and wreck things like a _vandal_—"

"_Ich bin der sohn meines vaters_," he interjected from under her arm, trying to shove it off his throat.

"—and you expect me— to entertain your sorry ass? My lands are closed to you if you're going to be violent."

"Not violent—just wanted—a talk." Finally, he was able to loosen her chokehold and throw her off him by sheer speed of the hands, retaking his spot as top man. By talk, of course, he meant spar, he meant grappling, he meant safe antagonism—the kinds of tools used to heal all his hurt, they knew. He gave her a zealot's grin. She grimaced. "Come now, you're overreacting like a _girl_— I didn't bring a single tank with me, I swear, Ungarn. Just my bitchin' motorcycle-"

"You have a motorcycle now?"

"Hell yes—"

"How do you pay for the fuel?"

He glowered at her. What a precisely practical thing to say. It was almost as if he could still smell the Austrian on her, or maybe it was the effect of the era at play again. Either way, it was disheartening, so he shoved at her. "Who cares?"

"I don't." She punched him swiftly in the eye, this time, but he couldn't shake the feeling of hesitance. She was wearing down now. "But you can take it all the way back to Berlin because _I don't want you here._"

"You _love_ this," he replied right away, as if he'd never been more sure of anything in his entire life. That was how he chose to say most things, she supposed, it never made them any less ridiculous.

"Love what?" she asked sharply, pulling him forward with her fist curled up in his shirtfront, letting her other fist collide just so with his chin. His head jerked. The satisfaction was immense, even as she spat out words with the cadence of gunfire. "Acting like children? Being mistreated? _Sleeping with you?_"

The lull in motion left just the sound of breathing, ragged and raw.

"Maybe. You tell me. I wanna be here, Lizzie. No harm done. 'Ll fix your door—" he captured her hands, holding them together between their chests. The look she was giving him could kill a man. "I'll take you drinking, dancing."

"We don't do that here and _you are a horrid dancer._ You're _horrid._"

He leaned in, eyes flashing like fire—detached urgency, one plea, though it didn't sound like one at all. "Let me stay."

"No."

"Let me stay a while, " he said, as if that prospect was any better.

"_No!_"

"Why the hell not—"

"Why _would_ you—"

A sigh. "How about you listen, then? You're right. Russia's really getting on my ass."

That seemed to give her pause. He took a deep breath. The floorboards creaked. Something else creaked—the rickety door.

"Mags," said another voice entirely, not bothering to hide his laughter. It grated Gilbert's ears. "Oh my _God_. Why do I always gotta walk in on you?"

Gilbert swerved his head toward the doorway, stiffening in an instant at the shock sight of a smug Poland in a sleeveless shirt, and—and Elizaveta, ever on the ball, valiantly took the chance to thrust her leg up into his crotch zone. "_What the fuck_," he said, and Feliks dropped the grocery bags when he doubled over laughing.

* * *

t will be a chapter!fic that updates every week? And the next few chapters will jump scenes and be longer, I hope.

- Prussia refers to Austria's frugality, his neatness, and also the fact that Hungary and Austria lived together in a big guarded house in Vienna for a long time; Gilbert would go pester them there by sneaking in. Gilbert and Hungary have something of a history of sneaking into each others' houses through the back door.  
- My headcanon is that nations can sense other nations within their borders, but they don't know exactly where they are or who they are.  
- the GDR- East Germany  
- '56 - The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, inspired by Polish October. There was this uprising but it lasted about a month before it was put down, and Russia had Hungary on lockdown afterwards.  
- Ich bin der sohn meines vaters - "I am my father's son" since she calls him a vandal. He's being facetious. :p  
- Ungarn - German for Hungary  
- fuss about fuel - Iron Curtain made manufacturing hard, made getting resources hard, and made shopping hard, which will come up later eeee -excited-  
- Mags - Poland sometimes calls Hungary Mags, like Magyar. He'll also call Prussia Prusy.


End file.
